Impose death penalty for elephant hunters- Sajith

Housing and Construction Minister Sajith Premadasa yesterday stressed the importance of meting out capital punishment for those involved in the killing of the famous Galgamuwa tusker, also known as ‘Dala Puttuwa’ in order to protect other tuskers.

He made this observation at a media conference at his Ministry in Sethsiripaya, Battaramulla yesterday.

Addressing the media, the Minister stressed the importance of bringing amendments to the Fauna and Flora Protection Ordinance to impose the death penalty for elephant hunters.

The Minister also proposed to appoint a Tusker Protection Task Force covering all national wild life sanctuaries and wild life zones.

Minister Premadasa who does wild life photography as a hobby said that he has a huge collection of photographs of Dala Puttuwa and other tuskers and plans to publish a book in the near future.

He further said that he is willing to distribute the royalties from the sale of his book to the Tusker Protection Task Force which he proposes to establish in the future.

“Only 6-7 percent male elephants in Sri Lanka have tusks and the rarity of tuskers among elephants in Sri Lanka is due to the disappearance of the important tusker gene due to ivory racket,” Minister Premadasa charged.

He further said that the country failed to maintain accurate data on elephants since no proper survey had been conducted recently.

He stressed the necessity of conducting an indepth survey on wild elephants.

He proposed the Dry Zone as the ideal place to conduct a proper survey claiming that wild elephants move to reservoirs in search of water during this period mainly from June to September.

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